Top 10 expert opinions in the Cord Blood industry

Who is the most influential figure in cord blood around the world? What is the biggest challenge to overcome in the use of cord blood as a source of stem cells? We asked 10 leading experts in the cord blood world what they thought.

The cord blood banking industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, with cord blood banks increasing by 21 fold in less than 10 years, but recent challenges have meant that there are still issues that need to be addressed. High costs of units due to expensive storage and extraction, a lack of available units, and a plateau in the development of regenerative applications mean that a meeting between key players in this area is greatly needed.

Today cord blood is more relevant to the regenerative medicine community than ever. There is a huge amount of research currently happening in this area to utilise cord blood as well as other cells and tissues in increasingly wider areas of medicine. New business models have recently been brought into practice as the cord blood sector has developed and moved away from traditional models to increase collaboration and benefit the wider population. Leaps in innovation also mean more cost effective extraction, collection, bioprocessing, and storage.

We asked 10 leading experts working within the cord blood sector what they thought about the current state of the industry, what the greatest achievements in research were, what the biggest challenges were and who had done the most to advance the field of cord blood. Here’s what they had to say…